It started innocently enough; a little note about a sex tape floating around staring Paris Hilton. Many came to read and link, but it was an article only at that point.

I moved on, but the Googlers and Total Farker kept coming.

Then a few minutes of the tape hit Kazaa, newsgroups, Fleshbot, etc. and still they kept coming here. Finally I relented and decided to just give them what they came looking for. If you could see my referrer logs you would know what I'm talking about. You see they are scurrying around everywhere looking for the stuff, and they are a determined bunch.

All of this brings to bear a bigger question, "How will anyone make money off of this'?

To fully answer this question I must first make a few general observations:

While she may be famous for being famous, Paris Hilton clearly has what it takes should she decide to switch careers.

Now we know why Shannen Doherty always has that shit eating grin.

The video quality is akin to the Jessica Lynch rescue video.

Only people with night vision fetishes are going to want to buy the tape or DVD.

So how does one capitalize on pent-up demand for a scarce resource that will most likely have negative, or at best neutral, word of mouth once the public gets a chance to view it? Hollywood has the answers, since that describes 90% of their product.

First the tape and DVD should be targeted directly to adult video stores. It's the old Hollywood direct to video play, which they use for movies that really suck. The tape marketers have at best a 30 day window to sell as many copies as possible before the bootleg ends up widely circulated on Kazaa and other file sharing services. Once people get a whiff of the content they're probably not going to line up outside stores to buy the tape. The correlation here is to the opening weekend for Hollywood films. How does Hollywood deal with a stinker? They hold back the advance screenings (other than the trailer), then saturate the market and try to make as much as possible the first weekend before the negative vibe gets much play.

How can the Hilton team stop this? They can't, but they can ensure that the tape's producers make little or no money by attacking the distribution channel while waiting for the bootleg channel to get up to speed. Once the ripped version of the tape is floating around the file sharing networks, who is going to pony up $19.95 to see what is available for free?

No one…